FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Just so we’re perfectly clear here, Nick Saban can motivate himself to leave Alabama with the same words he uses on his players.

I mean, if he wants to.

The only person who truly knows if he is itching for another shot at the NFL is the same guy who can’t be trusted to tell the truth in this instance in the first place.

“I’m not sure, regardless of what I say, that anyone believes what I say, because I say it all the time,” Saban said of the NFL talk. “But nobody really believes that, so you know, maybe it doesn’t matter.”

Now that we’ve got that cleared up, back to the out card from Tuscaloosa. Saban made it clear at the beginning of this season that the bar for his players in defending their national championship wasn’t so much winning it all again as it was winning vs. yourself.

Are you the best player you can be? Have you pushed yourself to the limit, and extracted everything possible from your core?

This concept is important in the now annual will-he-or-won’t-he-leave-for-the-NFL narrative because Saban isn’t the best he can be as a coach. At least, in the NFL.

In fact, he’s a failure.

So if you’ve done all you can do at the college level; if you beat Notre Dame on Monday and win three of the last four national championships, what’s left in the college game?

Like it or not, Nick Saban can no longer succeed at Alabama without winning every time the Tide step on the field. This is the personal bar he has set; the one he can either continue to try and repurpose year after year—or the one he can change altogether.

He can stay in a situation where there is nothing left to prove, where he is undisputed king and will undoubtedly win more championships as long as he continues to do the same things year after year. Or he can move on to the elite of all football and right the only wrong in his coaching career.

“I know this much about Coach Saban,” said Alabama center Barrett Jones. “He’s a very competitive guy.”

And you just know those two years with the NFL’s Miami Dolphins eats away at Saban. In two disastrous seasons little went right, and they ended with a bald-faced lie about Saban not leaving for the Alabama job.

In the NFL, the discrepancy in talent is so small, it truly comes down to coaching and game-planning and finding ways—sometimes, play by play—to beat your opponent. For a true Xs and Ox nut like Saban, that’s nirvana.

Knowing what we now do about Saban and his maniacal approach to all things football, imagine what those 17 losses—seventeen—in two years with the Dolphins must have done to him.

Humbled him. Embarrassed him. Pushed him back to college football—where, with one more national title, he’ll become one of the greatest to ever coach the game. And then what’s left?

“I know he’s very happy here,” Jones said. “But ultimately, he has to answer that question.”

How could he not? It’s the same question he has asked of his players over and over this season.

It’s the same personal introspective that he, at some point, will analyze and reanalyze. The same professional demon that, at some point, he must turn and face.

This isn’t about a perfect fit with the Cleveland Browns. Or how one ownership group has the structure that will allow him to succeed and not be concerned with cap space. Or another franchise so desperate, it will pay so much, Saban can’t say no.

This is about Nick Saban looking in the mirror and asking this one simple question: Has he maxed out in the college game? Have all of the national titles and all the elite recruiting classes and all the work restoring the great name of Alabama added up to satisfy his professional desires?

More important, has all that college success done enough to fill that gaping wound of failure in the NFL?

Eight years ago, Saban lied about not leaving LSU for the NFL. Six years ago, Saban lied about not leaving the NFL for Alabama.

If he wants back in the NFL, and wants to add yet another weird twist to his career resume, do you really blame him?

“The one thing Coach Saban always tells us is why settle for mediocrity when you can achieve perfection,” said Alabama guard Chance Warmack.

That’s not a guy willing to walk away from 17 losses in the NFL without taking one more shot at it.